


all veiled by sunlight

by kimaracretak



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Force-Sensitive Amilyn Holdo, Gatalenta, Gen, Sith Leia Organa, Sith Luke Skywalker, Sith Padmé Amidala, haunted lakes and the sith girls they'd like to eat, sith girls who might eat each other first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-03 21:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20459801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Amilyn Holdo is a vision in purple and black, smiling at the assembled leaders of the Imperial Fleet with the sort of calm clarity that could only come from working overly hard to conceal something else. Leia, having snuck in just late enough that Mother couldn't ask her to leave without making a scene, has never been quite so glad to be in a briefing room.





	all veiled by sunlight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cheeryrepublicsunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheeryrepublicsunshine/gifts).

> All veiled by sunlight  
A murder for evenfall  
Where a new dawn resides  
— 'Eyrie', Ne Obliviscaris

The model TIE fighter zips through Leia's quarters in ever-tightening spirals, wobbling slightly as her irritation threatens to get the better of her. She lies back on her single pillow, eyes fixed on the ceiling as she attempts to force the model's flight without looking at it. One only needed to see the Force to command material objects, Mother always insisted, usually right before a comment about how there was nothing wrong with _Luke's_ sight.

Leia tended to retort that something as powerful as the Force ought to take lessons from the elegant simplicity of a lightsaber to the eye, but she's beginning to think she needs a new one. It's boring, being told for the trillionth time how ungrateful she is.

Luke enters without knocking, like he always does. It's not supposed to matter, they're _twins_ and that tends to mean things like doors are trivial when it comes to sensing the other's presence. But Leia's mood has long since taken its toll on her concentration, and the hiss of the opening doors snaps the last thread.

A model TIE to the head is not, strictly speaking, the worst thing either of them has done to the other. But Luke still staggers inside with exaggerated clumsiness, clutching the side of his head and making faces that sets Leia to giggling, despite her mood.

"Shouldn't you be at the meeting? For the Gatalentan ... thing?" he asks, frowning at the state of her day robe.

"I'm grounded, haven't you noticed? Mother doesn't like how ... _suggestible_ the Stormtroopers get when I do inspections. Or did you think I was practising baby momentum drills for fun?" Fun was exactly what the morning should have been, a little experiment in will-bending and a chance to see how well the new targeting drills had been taking hold among the masses.

But no. Four dead troopers and a narrowly averted hull breach later, what Leia thought a resounding success was Mother's idea of unacceptable carelessness on the eve of battle or negotiations, and here Leia was. Grounded. Forced to play with metal and plastics and no malleable minds at all.

She pushes the images at her brother instead of bothering to explain. They're hardly worth words, anyway, not when there's the brief horror glancing across Luke's face to entertain her instead.

"So, uh. Productive morning, then?"

Leia grins and pretends not to notice the sarcasm. "Well, _I_ certainly thought so. Mother wasn't amused."

"Can't imagine why she didn't want blood and guts all over the meeting room today," Luke says dryly. "It's only the alliance that she's been working towards since we were children. The amount of resources on that planet - the stories they have about the Force - finally, all ours."

"Oh?" Leia perks up at that. "Gatalenta finally sending us someone important, then?"

Luke shrugs. "Some pilot. Closest thing they have to a planetary defence force commander, I think."

It sounds, at the very least, more promising than any of their past contacts. "Sith? Any kind of Force-sensitive?"

Luke pauses, uncharacteristically hesitant. "She's - I only saw her on the holocall."

Leia's eyes narrow. "But there's something about her, isn't there?" she presses. "What, something about how she talked, or, or -"

"You …. well. You wouldn't know she was Gatalentan, to look at her. She's - remember when you were little and you started pulling dead flowers out of stars-know-where?"

"I knew where," Leia says, but she gestures at him to continue anyway, already planning how to get into this new meeting.

"She's the opposite of that. _Too_ alive."

Leia hums thoughtfully, trying to piece together a sense of the woman from the fragmentary images drifting through Luke's mind. "She's pulling power from somewhere, then. I want her."

Luke sighs. "Yeah, I thought you might." He tosses a small datachip onto her bed. "Mother's latest passcode set. You know how she gets about physical security when the boss isn't around."

Leia bounds off the bed to wrap him in a hug. "Best brother ever," she grins into his shoulder, and she can feel his own excitement rising to meet hers almost despite himself.

"I'd change, though, before you try to do anything with them. There's casually intimidating, and then there's, uh. That."

Leia disentangles herself and shoves him back towards the door, not entirely kindly and not entirely physically. "Dick. Not all of us have smuggler boyfriends to bring us fancy Corellian jackets."

The door opens and shuts on Luke's protest that Han is _not my boyfriend, really_, but he repeats it in her head twice more for good measure.

Leia rolls her eyes and sets about dressing as the perfect image of her mother's daughter.

*

Amilyn Holdo is a vision in purple and black, smiling at the assembled leaders of the Imperial Fleet with the sort of calm clarity that could only come from working overly hard to conceal something else. Leia, having snuck in just late enough that Mother couldn't ask her to leave without making a scene, has never been quite so glad to be in a briefing room.

Even more importantly, though, Amilyn Holdo has plans. The bureaucratic ones that Mother likes, yes - plans to place operatives within the Council of Mothers and to make sure that students being sent on to Imperial academies had the proper sort of academic records to indicate they were well-prepared for their new lives. But she has others more vague and more interesting - she talks of lakes and caves and hyperspace lanes, and when she does her words have an undercurrent of command to them that might threaten Leia if she didn't know it so well.

She doesn't need the whole meeting to know that she wants, _needs_ Amilyn in a way that has nothing to do with how the Empire needs Gatalenta.

When talk shifts to the matter of payments, Leia narrows her eyes experiments with pinning Amilyn to her seat with her gaze. The woman's eye twitches, an almost imperceptible motion that barely disturbs the glitter lining the sharp curve of her lashes. And then, a second later, her voice in Leia's head: _oh, that wasn't very nice_, curling across the top of her spine.

Leia flushes. She hasn't been caught like that in longer than she can remember. Mother's disapproval ripples over her skin - she's not strong enough in the Force to know what happened, but Leia's anger is too much even for her.

Mother leaves her alone with Amilyn after everyone's filed out, though. Amilyn remains in her seat at the head of the table, eyebrow raised as if to drive home the point that she is absolutely remaining there by choice.

For a long moment, Leia simply watches. Wanting is nothing new to her - it was one of the first things she had learned when Mother brought her to Emperor Palpatine's knee and she had sensed the power that clung to him. Before she knew she was Sith, she had known the Force loved her, and her brother.

In Amilyn, for the first time, she senses something almost like competition.

It's Amilyn who breaks the silence. "I think you would be happier if I took you to Gatalenta."

Leia snorts in disbelief. "Not yet. Not until you and your allies on the Council of Mothers can assure me of its safety."

But the words have done their job. Happier. Happy. When was the last time someone had asked her if she was happy?

"You're very talented, Leia. Probably more talented than I am. But you're never going to reach your potential on this ship. Lightsaber drills, flipping switches in Stormtrooper minds - are you telling me that fulfills you?"

Amilyn stares up at her, lips parted and eyes shining. A picture of innocence so contrived she can only be begging Leia to ruin her.

Leia stalks across the room, sits on the edge of the table so Amilyn can't look anywhere but her eyes. "The ship has led me to victory so far. It's all I need."

Amilyn shakes her head. "Passion, strength, power, victory - everything _Qotsisajak_ talks about is hollow without happiness."

Leia likes hollow. The hollow under her heart has driven her forward, through the flight from Naboo and her trial on Malachor and beyond. But now - "So you know Sith. You know our code and our language. What makes you think you know me, and my need to be happy?"

Amilyn reaches up, cups Leia's cheek in one hand. An hour ago, Leia might have cut it off in irritation at being touched, especially by a foreign pilot. Now, it's all she can do to refuse to lean into it. "I don't know you, not wholly. But I know that the Force lives on Gatalenta, and it is neither Jedi nor Sith. And I know it can make you more powerful than you have ever thought, and, yes, happy. Because happiness is our moral imperative, and you -" she winks. "You know all about imperatives, hm?"

Leia breathes. She reaches out to the Force, almost tentatively, but there's no extra command behind Amilyn's words now. Just the pure force of belief.

"Fine. Take me planetside. But if you're wrong, you die."

Amilyn just smiles.

*

"Absolutely not."

Leia pouts. "It's like you don't believe in me at all, Mother."

"I don't need to believe, I know. I saw what you did this morning, and I don't want a repeat of it on Gatalenta until and unless it becomes necessary - which I don't think it will."

Leia tries not to deflate too much at those last words. "I'll be with Holdo. She'll force me to behave."

Mother raises a skeptical eyebrow. "More Force users tend to compound the potential for chaos, not decrease it. The Rule of Two was the wrong solution to a very real problem."

"What if what's down there is a better solution?" Leia places her hand on her saber hilt in warning. She hasn't drawn a weapon against her mother in years, not since they left Alderaan, and yet -

She would. To understand what on Gatalenta had a hold on her, to know why Amilyn Holdo was so convincing without even touching the Force, she would draw her saber on her mother. Would fight her. Would ….

No. She wouldn't kill her. In the living world Mother clings to the Force with desperate hands and rapidly-dulling teeth. With that bond severed, with Mother's spirit free to sink deeper into the Force and its powers, she would become dangerous to Leia for the first time.

Mother watches, silent. Leia reaches out for her mind. _I'm going_, she thinks, _I'm going to Gatalenta and it's not going to interfere with your plans, it's going to help them_ transcend.

Mother does not blink. Mother, in fact, gives absolutely no indication at all that she's felt Leia's attempt to twist her thoughts.

"I'll take Luke," Leia says, and finally Mother's eyes flash in anger.

"Absolutely not. You've dragged your brother into quite enough messes over the years. He stays with me."

There: the opening she's been waiting for. "And _I_ go to Gatalenta."

Realisation dawns twinned with white-hot fury in Mother's eyes, and Leia laughs with the joy of causing such a wonderful look. She wins Mother's word games more and more often these days.

"Be quick about it," Mother says. "And _don't_ kill her unless I order you to."

"Boring," Leia sighs as she sweeps out of the room, but it's more for appearances. Best not to let Mother know how interesting Amilyn really is until she's sure this is a toy that can't be taken away.

*

Amilyn flies like Luke after five cups of caf, and Leia's too focussed on trying to figure out how she's managing it with her eyes shut to say anything remotely intelligent on their short flight down. By the time Amilyn sets them down next to a glassy purple lake, the questions that have been building up under her tongue are nearly desperate to spill out.

"This is my favourite place on the planet." Amilyn preempts them all: Leia is learning that this is one of her talents.

But at least one of her questions is fitting for this, too. "Why?"

Amilyn points up to the sky, and the single visible sun. "Grian," she says. "Our first sun, and our largest. If we wait an hour, it will be Haul's morning. And then you'll see."

Leia frowns. "My time is valuable. If this is just a sightseeing trip, you could have brought anyone."

Amilyn meets her eyes, looking deadly serious for the first time. "It is not only a sightseeing trip. The rules of the Force don't work alone here. They obey our stars. _Listen_."

Leia drops her gaze to Amilyn's lips. She's not sure she believes the other woman, she's not sure she wants to believe her, but she wants to know. So she listens.

And under the lake: the thing that is not the Force's heartbeat, but that might be Leia's.

"_Good_," Amilyn says, a rushed exhale of pride, and with just the word, Leia feels like she's flying again. Amilyn's own heartbeat is as steady as a lightsaber's hum. When had she stepped so close that Leia could feel that?

"I think," Leia says, and licks her lips. Amilyn's hand is on her chest, burning away her desire for words. "That we have some time to spend getting to know each other, then. _Because it would make me happy_."

She doesn't try for a compulsion this time, and refuses to think it might be because Amilyn had noticed her first attempt in the logistics meeting. No, she thinks, this is simply a test. An invitation, to see if Amilyn truly has what it takes to desire and be desired by her.

Amilyn laughs, and the sound is startlingly loud. "Oh, Leia. You really think that wasn't half the reason I asked you to come down here with me?"

"I wanted - only half?" Leia pulls back, frowning. She tries to imagine Amilyn standing on the lakeshore with Luke, with Mother, with a faceless trooper. Fails.

"Well," Amilyn says softly, the hand on Leia's chest forming into a fist. Leia hadn't noticed before how very blue her eyes were, how sharp her nails as they nearly threatened to rip through her tunic. Even with the armour she wears below, it feels as though Amilyn could touch her skin with the barest thought. "I wanted you specifically from the moment I saw you, yes. But I always planned to bring _someone_ here."

Leia lets herself be drawn forward, close enough that their lips are nearly touching. Close enough that she can't see Amilyn's eyes, can't decide whether to bite, to kiss, to send Amilyn's long gorgeous body flying backwards with enough speed that it would break on impact with her beloved lake.

She does none of those things. "This is what you were hiding," she says, and feels more than sees when Amilyn's lips curve into a smile. "What are you, Amilyn Holdo?"

It's the right question, maybe the first right question she's asked all day, and she knows as soon as Amilyn winds Leia's braid around her free hand and kisses her. Her lips are cold, and Leia would lean into the sensation if not for how firmly Amilyn held her in place. But it's been a long time since she's been kissed so _intently_, by someone who seems already to know exactly what she likes, and for the moment, she is satisfied to let Amilyn explore.

Amilyn's mouth is insistent, every kiss robbing Leia of the chance for breath. She nips at Amilyn's lips, tastes blood in the split second before Amilyn pulls hard at her braid and tips her back, dizzyingly, to face the sky filled with a thousand burning Imperial eyes. She thinks Amilyn might crawl under her skin. She thinks she might let her, even without an answer: no matter what Amilyn is, she is going to make Leia _more_.

Amilyn's heartbeat is still so loud. It pulses insistently under Leia's lips as she maps a path down to the hollow of her throat. It murmurs against Leia's mouth in time with the waves against the shore that she hadn't realised they had walked so close to.

Her boots hit mud. She stumbles, would fall if not for Amilyn's hands at the back of her neck, on her waist. "How much of you is under the water," Leia gasps. _How much of me?_

Because she knows, now, as the water reaches out for her. She and Luke had always known the Force lived on Gatalenta: Mother and the Emperor would have left it alone without their urging, would have blasted the planet into submission long ago if not for the twins' insistence that they needed it, and the people, intact.

And so the Sith under Padme Amidala had gained a reputation for deadly patience, for passions no less dangerous for all that they ran cold. All of that, Leia would throw aside in an instant for answers, for Amilyn's hands against her bare skin, for -

"Not as much as you might think," Amilyn says, and it takes Leia a moment to realise that she's giving Leia her answer. "And not quite as much as I would like. You don't have to be Sith to be loved, you know, it just makes everything easier."

And it's worth it, frighteningly so: decades of work simply to stand on Gatalenta and be told that the Force _does_ love her, that everything she's done has been right. If that love has to be split with Amilyn, well. She'd already known it must be shared with Luke, and she'd been planning to keep Amilyn anyway.

Leia nudges her knee between Amilyn's, presses her further back towards the water's edge. "Show me," she says, and it's not a compulsion and it's not begging, it's something undeniable, words that will break her body in half if she tries to hold them in. "I need - you must -"

Amilyn pauses, breathes. Turns towards the west, where the light is beginning to expand with the second sunrise, and Leia can practically feel her calculations in the air between them.

"Haul will be high enough by the time we reach the caves," she decides, and the Force ripples over Leia's skin, a shock of approval mirrored in Amilyn's next kiss. "Come with me," she says, and that's all the warning Leia has before Amilyn _pulls_, and Leia crashes into the deceptively deep water with an eagerness she's never felt before.

This time, Amilyn's hands don't save Leia. This time her hands are one with the water, clutching Leia against her body and drawing them both down, down through the sunlight-veiled water to their future, and to the Empire's.

It hardly matters what lies in the caves, Leia thinks, kissing Amilyn for breath as they float slowly down, luxuriating in the feeling of the water against her bare skin - of Amilyn's hands against her bare skin, as the current tugs at her tunic. After this, Mother will never deny her again.


End file.
